Plankton Games – Dave Dobson
2-4 Players
Ages 12+
~30 Minutes
Overview
Diggity is a strategic card game in which each player takes turns placing cards down on the table to create a single contiguous Mine (in somewhat of a “Water Works” fashion.) each room in the mine has a symbol, or shape on it. By playing Mine rooms near each other, creating certain sequences of shapes, you can create tools that will help you protect the Gold you excavate from the Mine, or to steal it from others. Whoever has the most Gold when all Gold the cards are gone is the winner!
Rulebook
Extremely well written and incredibly concise; this is a very light game and the rules are not very complex. The rules are written on one page (front and back) and there was room leftover for diagrams. We had absolutely no trouble figuring this game out when we got down to it and well-written rules can really help a game. Rulebook gets an A+ from me.
Startup
Was really no trouble at all, thanks to the simple nature of the game; we shuffled up the Mine cards and Gold cards dealt out some Mine cards to everyone, and got right to playing. It took a couple rounds for us to see the strategy and the point of the different tools and why you might not want to use them at certain strategic points. But there is a learning curve involved with every game and this is no exception and it certainly won’t count against it. After a few rounds we really got into the swing of things and began deliberately trying to screw whoever was ahead, Diggity is quite excellent in this regard.
Art
The art in the game left little to be desired. It accomplishes what it sets out to do and it does so very cleanly. The colors are vibrant enough for the subject matter, and everything is easy to read. A+ here also.
What could be better?
Not a lot that I could think of. It would make things more interesting if maybe a fifth tool could be added in some way so that a fifth player could play the game, but I really couldn’t think of anything that would be suitable. It is difficult to improve upon a game like this because it hit its target so well as a light strategy card game for four players. There isn’t a lot of expansion potential, which I enjoy in a lot of games, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
Final Word
The experience I had with Diggity is difficult to describe…you ever order something online like, say, from Amazon, and you know that it is the size of a cell phone, but they send it to you inside a box that could fit a small TV which contains two progressively smaller boxes, full of packing peanuts and such? Diggity isn’t like that. I ordered something that is the size of a cell phone, and it came in a cell phone sized package, with no fluff, and nothing unnecessary added. The game has a purpose, and it serves that purpose in a very elegant way. Diggity is light enough to play with your kids, and compact enough to take on road trips or anywhere you go, as long as you’ll have a big enough table to play on. Diggity didn’t exactly change my life, but it serves as a role model of good design. This is a great game that does what it was meant to do without any static at all. For that, I think it deserves a 5. If you ever played Water Works, or enjoy Puzzle games, I really think you’d get a kick out of Diggity.
Check out Diggity and tons of other great games over at The Game Crafter
[The Author has graciously donated a copy of his game, ‘Diggity’ for the purposes of this review. Thank you very much! We had a lot of fun, and I appreciate your patience during the review process! If anyone else would like to have his or her game reviewed and advertised for free on www.gamersuniversity.com, please feel free to email me at Endymian @ gmail . com!]
